Internal Links: How Important and How to Boost
-
A couple of my competitors have WAY more internal links than I do, and are outranking me. Could that be an important factor? (Let's assume all other things equal, i.e. don't bother explaining that it's complicated and many factors are involved, please.)
If boosting the number is important, what's the best way to do it (site is heliski.com)
thx,
tj
-
If all other things are equal AND you all have some crawlability issues, yes it could be a major factor. For example, if you have deep pages that are not indexed well then linking to them outside of the sitemap could help. Just because a page is in the sitemap doesn't mean Google wants to index it. If it has zero other links (either internally or externally) and the content is a little "thin" they may choose not to include it. Adding a decent internal link could make the difference there.
If all other things are equal AND those pages are indexed and linked to from your crawlable navigation, yes it could be a moderate factor if your competitors are interlinking from body copy and the only place you link from is the navigation - as these types of links are not treated exactly the same.
That's the short answer. The long answer is - it's complicated. Feel free to stop reading here if you really don't care about possible complications.
Some sites go too far on their interlinking strategy and end up with a penalty. I've seen this happen on a few Wordpress sites that use a plugin to automatically link every single instance of a phrase to a specific landing page. That just doesn't look natural, and you could end up getting filtered or penalized at the level of the page or, more likely, for that specific anchor text.
Another thing to look out for is future scaleability. For example, I don't often like to hard code links to specific products within the body copy of an eCommerce site because products tend to come and go. What you'd end up with a few years later is an avalanche of 404 errors that you'll have to manually go in and fix. I tend to leave product interlinking automated (e.g. Related products widget) and save the hard-coded links for linking to category pages, which tend to stick around longer.
-
Hi TJ,
While internal links do help your websites ranking, they aren't a major factor. They can be used for keywords and boosts a few website analytics such as bounce rate and total time spent on page.
Your time would be better served focusing on producing content and getting external link clicks to your website through multiple channels. This will increase your SEO and page rankings. This is most likely why your competitors are out ranking you. Not because of their internal links.
It seems to me you already have a large number of internal links under the heading 'Heliskiing Canada Operators'.
Best of luck with your SEO!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What is a natural link?
Hi everyone, I'm trying to better understand what is meant by a natural link and would appreciate any assistance. Doing some competitor link analysis I've noticed a web developer who has created a directory for all its customers. This is not a directory in the traditional sense of being of use to an end user, but to my untrained eyes, it looks like an internal directory used solely for the purpose of link building. For all I know this might be perfectly good practice in the industry, but as a beginner, I'm attempting to get an understanding of things. My question is, what precisely is meant by a natural link? If the above scenario is all ok, whereby there are businesses in the same field of work, but ultimately could be in any given location, on a directory, are they natural links? Do these kind of directories that don't service an end user, exist if the common feature between them is say location only, or an seo agency only? Appreciate I could be completely out of kilter on this, but it seems the benefit on SERPs is pretty significant for something that seems pretty "unnatural" to me? Any guidance would be appreciated...tom
Link Building | | T-J-I1 -
A link with "return false"- OSE sees as a No Followed Link
Hello, I couldn't find a clear answer to the impact on SEO for a link written in this way: [" class="expert_info" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">](w</span>ww.yourwebsite.com<span style=) [Does the "return false" act as a "no follow"? I came across this in our link data in Open Site Explorer which lists these links all as "no follows." However, an engineer I spoke to said that it shouldn't impact search engine behavior. Any ideas? Thank you in advance! -Sarah K.](w</span>ww.yourwebsite.com<span style=)
Link Building | | OneMedical0 -
Internal linking question
How important is internal linking from body content? If you have 500 words of content on each page is it good practise to try and get a few links in to other pages? Surely if you do this your pass more juice out of the page, which might lead to devaluing the page in the SE's.
Link Building | | activitysuper0 -
Potential internal links issue
From the competitive domain analysis, it looks like our site only has 1 internal link because there is only one more “total link” than “total external links”. However, I am quite sure that we have many more internal links on our site, including breadcrumbs throughout the product pages. What am I missing here? One other piece of potentially relevant information is that our URL changed about 6 weeks ago. Would this change be impacting the number of internal links that we are getting credit for on our site?
Link Building | | dentalsupply-seo0 -
Too Many Links???
SEOMOZ is telling me I have more than 100 links on quite a few of my pages, and I cant seem to find out what links they are finding. Like for instance on this page http://standupguys.biz/what-we-haul/commercial-junk-removal-services/computer-removal-recycling/ It is telling me that I have 117 hyper links (which is WAY too high). Can anyone explain to me where these are coming from, and how I can avoid this?? Please and thank you.
Link Building | | Caseman0 -
Linking Root Domains V.s Total Links
When analysing a company's inbound links, what is more important to note: The number of linking root domains, or the total number of links? And why?
Link Building | | SEOrookie170 -
Link Frequency
I understand that good link building is all about the quality of the link / the anchor text attached to it. But, what about frequency? Should I build until I can't build anymore? or create a plan to submit links to a certain # of sites per week/month?
Link Building | | pricefutures0